Disarmed Ebola virus to aid quest for vaccine

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Scientists disarmed the Ebola virus by removing a single gene, providing a new laboratory tool that will help the development of drugs and vaccines against the lethal tropical disease.

Efforts to find ways of treating Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever that kills between 50-90 per cent of the people it infects, have so far been greatly held up by its extreme virulence. The extreme health hazard posed by the virus means that it can be studied only in highly specialised laboratories equipped to biosafety level four (BSL 4), the highest category of containment facility.